Before we said our last farewells to the Kick the Dust trainees, they came and joined us on the annual deep clean at the Gressenhall stores. The deep clean was planned through 2 weeks in early May with a team of trainees and members of NMS staff rounded up to join in!
My name is Angelica Urfano and I’m the teaching Museum’s Collection Management trainee for 2022. I’m based at two location – Shirehall, 2 days of the week with Rosalind Palmer and Samantha Johns and Gressenhall on Wednesdays with Wayne Kett. Through working at Gressenhall, I was able to work closely with Wayne on how he prepares for the deep clean.
We started our deep clean day by being put into our assigned teams of 2-3 and worked together in designated areas. I was put in charge of the objects on the roller racking with the assistance and guidance from Wayne and David Harvey to help me along the way.
With both health and safety and house rules in place, we were ready to go. We started of by being shown how to do some conservation work on some of the objects and what potential hazards to look out for whilst working.
I dived right in with a 1000 year old chest! Sha got to clean this beautiful 1600’s chest (which looked liked it once held pirate’s loot!) It was a stunning piece and we knew it needed quite a bit of careful maintenance since the metal sheets that were holding the shape together was incredibly fragile and rusty! Whilst Katie and Beau had the lovely chance in getting up close and personal with a very old toilet set. Yum!
There was a large team of us grouped in on one of our last days, it mainly consisted of the Kick the Dust trainees and we all worked together in tackling the roller racking.
We got so much done from the second row of the roller racking! Ricardo and I worked together on some beautiful mid 1900’s wardrobes with it’s special compartments and decadent labels while Wayne dismantled and reassembled some parts of the racking for us to be able to clean some objects from above. (They had been patiently waiting to be cleaned for quite some time!) Whilst Sophie and Gaby worked on the objects on ground level that people coming to the stores on tours were able to see.
It was also Sophie’s first time with the deep clean, she was tasked to clean this metal/wooden press which took her most of the day and so when I was finished with what I was doing with Ricardo, I helped her on her object to give her a chance in doing something else. I noticed through cleaning that it had signs of woodworm, I notified Wayne and David about this and was given the job to wrap it ready for the freezer. Instead, I gave the opportunity to the KTD trainees – to give them that experience! It was brilliant, we all worked together to wrap this incredibly large object and made it look like it was ready for Christmas! Such a fun day with them!
The annual Gressenhall deep clean is an essential part of the routine for the museum to keep the objects in steady conditions and check at the best of our abilities, this also give us newbies a chance to get up close and personal to some of the wonderful objects in their full specs and be educated on their history during the process.
One of the finally things we got to do on our days after a good amount of work was to go and visit the ground’s farm and treat ourselves to a tractor ride with a meet and greet with some animals.
By Angelica Urfano Aug 2022
The Teaching Museum Blog 